Change
by Trinity Day
Summary: Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom, recently returned from a mission for the Order of the Phoenix, discuss the war, the future and other things.


**Change  
Part 1/1**

**Summary: Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom, recently returned from a mission for the Order of the Phoenix, discuss the war, the future and other things.**

**Disclaimer: The characters don't belong to me. You all know that. You all know that they belong to the wonderful author that we all know and worship, J.K. Rowling.**

**Author's Note: Thank you to Emerald Eyez and Dee D who beta'd this for me. **

Also, I have Support Services. That means that, if you want, you can put me on Author Alert and receive notice when I post stories or parts of stories, even if you haven't paid yourself.

Posted: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 (Happy 20th Birthday, Me!) _Know what would be a nice birthday present? Reviews!_

Alice made it back to Order Headquarters before being sick again - barely. And even then she ended up vomiting in the shrubbery beside the front door. Lily, whose skin tone was competing with her eyes to see which could be the greenest, waited patiently for her companion to stop retching.  
  
"Sorry," Alice apologized. She was still bent over, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. It was not the first time she had been sick. Twice at the safe-house itself and once while they were walking to a safe place to Apparate.  
  
"Don't be. I'd be right down there with you if I weren't too sick to be sick. Those poor children . . . " Lily trailed off, too horrified to finish the sentence. Alice shared the sentiment and leaned over again, just in case. This time she wasn't sick.  
  
When the two women finally made it inside, they were at a loss as to what to do. If either of them could have slept, they would; both had been up all night, arriving at the safe-house a little past ten the night before. It was now one the next afternoon.  
  
No one else was around, all off on various jobs for the Order or, in some cases, their actual jobs and Dumbledore was at the Ministry all weekend for a hush-hush conference that technically they were not supposed to know about but would learn all of what happened at the next Order meeting. It did, however, prevent them from contacting him with their report.  
  
Alice conjured up some tea and the two sat at the kitchen table, too dazed to actually drink it. Which turned out to be a blessing since instead of tea, Alice had added dried Boomslang skin to the hot water without either of them noticing.  
  
Lily stood up suddenly, interrupting the silence. "I'm going to make some tea," she announced.  
  
"One cream, no sugar," Alice said automatically.  
  
Lily started shuffling through the kitchen, shell-shocked, searching for a kettle. Only passing it five times, she never noticed the one on the counter. Moody had destroyed the second kettle a few weeks earlier because of its suspicious behaviour and no one had replaced it yet. The spare was missing as Sirius had borrowed it, claiming to need it for a prank he was planning to lighten the mood. Everyone else just hoped that he would show more tact than he usually did - well, honestly, than he ever did - and ensure the prank wasn't performed after a particularly gruesome experience. Such as the one Lily and Alice had seen today.  
  
After a few minutes, Alice got up and joined Lily in the search. At length, Lily gave up. "I can't find the kettle," she said.  
  
"Me neither," Alice said even as she put the one remaining kettle back where she had found it, which was right where it belonged and was always kept. Alice had moved it aside to see if perhaps the kettle, the object of their search, was behind it, not realizing what she was doing for the same reasons Lily had passed it so many times without noticing. For that matter, it wasn't necessary for the two witches to use the kettle for tea at all - Alice hadn't earlier - but simple things like that escaped their notice right then.  
  
They sat back down at the table, at a loss for what to do next. At length, Alice calmly announced, "I'm going to be sick," before rushing to the toilet. She made it this time. Lily, having followed her, sat down on the edge of the bath.  
  
"Those poor children," Lily said again. Alice stuck her head back over the toilet.  
  
"Don't say that," she pleaded fiercely.  
  
"I can't help it. I keep on seeing their faces, seeing their poor, broken bodies . . . " Lily broke off, shuddering.  
  
Death Eaters had learned the location of one of the safe-houses. Lily and Alice were first on the scene - Alice had run after the offenders, who Apparated without a fight, while Lily was left to look for survivors. There had been a few, but not many, and Lily couldn't decide who was luckier, the ones who were still alive or the ones who died quickly.  
  
"How could they - how _could_ they?" Alice cried passionately. "They were just children." Seventeen children, all under the age of ten. Three caretakers. The death count was at eleven, with two more of the children not expected to last the night. One caretaker was Avada Kedavra'd along with a nine year old, a seven year old and an eight month baby who had only been given to Ministry care twenty-three days ago by her parents. Four were unaccounted for, including one of the caretakers.  
  
The only job worst than Lily and Alice's own was to be the poor Ministry worker who had to inform the parents that the Ministry safe-house to which they'd entrusted the lives of their children was not as safe as promised.  
  
Only one child escaped unscathed - relatively speaking. Four year old Miles Davis-Jones hid from his attackers in an old trunk in the basement. He had shared the space with a Boggart. He hadn't said a thing since the rescuers found him, quite by accident, almost two full hours after the Death Eaters had fled.  
  
"It's sick," Lily said, leaning her head against the cool ceramic wall. "It's sick. They were children. They were children of low-ranking Ministry workers and other concerned witches and wizards. Did you know almost three-quarters of them were full-blooded? What am I supposed to do? I'm Muggle-born. If they do this to Purebloods, what will they do to my baby?"  
  
"Do you think Frank and I are any better off?" Alice asked bitterly. "We're Aurors and members of the Order. We're targets for who we are. Our children will be too. How can we keep our babies with us? But how can we give them up?"

Lily was saved from having to come up with a response - an impossible task - because Alice muttered, "Oh God," and started throwing up again.  
  
While Alice was being sick, Lily quietly slipped back to the kitchen, missing the kettle yet again, and bringing back a box from the cupboards. "Cracker? They always help Pet. Pet - my sister Petunia. She's a Muggle," Lily added by way of explanation, then asked, "We're not talking about a hypothetical baby here, are we?"  
  
"No," Alice admitted, closing her eyes wearily. It had been a long day in more ways than one.  
  
"I didn't think so. Pet was having morning sickness, too, when I visited her a few weeks ago. So far I've avoided it, though."  
  
"Yours isn't a hypothetical baby, either?" Alice wasn't too surprised, having recognized Lily's worries for her offspring to be about as abstract as her own were.  
  
"I'm eight or nine weeks along," Lily confessed.  
  
"Me too. Maybe ten. I'm not sure."  
  
"Have you told Frank yet?"  
  
Alice shook her head. "No. I think he might suspect, though."  
  
"At least he's been around enough to suspect," Lily said, somewhat bitterly.  
  
"James is out on a mission again?" The Order tried to keep its activities secret, even amongst its own members. The idea behind it was that if one member was captured, or worse, they wouldn't be able to betray the rest. It didn't always work as well as hoped since most people had a fairly good idea where everyone else was and what they were doing.  
  
"Third one this month. He's spent more nights gone than he has in our bed. I don't know how I'm going to tell him. What has Frank said?"  
  
"Nothing, yet. As I said, I think he suspects, but he hasn't asked. I don't think he wants to admit it." Alice snorted. "Hell, I wouldn't admit it to myself until a week ago."  
  
"You don't want children then?" Lily asked, keeping everything but the barest hint of disbelief out of her voice.  
  
"Oh, we want them well enough, just not now. We hoped to wait until after the war to start a family. You?"  
  
"James and I want children very much," Lily answered promptly.  
  
The words slipped out of Alice's mouth before she could stop them. "You weren't trying, were you?"  
  
"Well," Lily said, drawing out the word, "we weren't _trying_ exactly, but we weren't _not_ trying, either."  
  
"But you and James are even younger than me and Frank. You're barely out of Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake! You couldn't seriously be thinking of starting a family so soon - not in this. Not with everything we've seen." Never known for her tact, the many hours she had been up, combined with the horrors they'd both witnessed, made Alice even blunter than usual.  
  
Lily lifted her chin defiantly. "Why not? What we've seen is that either one of us could die at any time. Why wait until after the war to start a family if there might not be an 'after the war' for us."  
  
It was a point that Alice could understand, even if she couldn't agree. "So you're about as far along as me? That means the babies will be along in, what, mid- to late-July?"  
  
"Maybe August. I haven't been to the Healer's yet."  
  
Alice shook her head. "That's still too close. The Order can't afford to lose two more of its members. There's too few of us as it is."  
  
"The Order isn't losing us," Lily said stubbornly but firmly. She had given this a lot of thought and it was reflected in her tone. "We'll have to cut down on the active missions, yes, especially once we start showing. Can't have a baby slowing us down. But that doesn't mean we're out of the game. There's still plenty we can do. Research. Organization. Recruiting. Consolidating our information."  
  
"We already have people doing that. What the Order needs is more people for active duty. We can't let them down," Alice argued.  
  
"So what are we supposed to do?" Lily asked coolly. "Go out into the field nine months pregnant and duel with Death Eaters? Not only will we be putting ourselves, _our babies_, on the line, we'll also be putting other Order members on the line."  
  
"I know that," snapped Alice. "Don't think I haven't thought of that already. That's what's so infuriating."  
  
"You're approaching this with an Auror mindset," said Lily.  
  
"I am an Auror."  
  
"I know that, but you're still thinking too much like an Auror. You're thinking that worthiest thing you can do in the fight against Voldemort is to get out there and fight the Death Eaters head on head at every opportunity. James is the same way. Frank, too."  
  
"Are you trying to say that we shouldn't be fighting the Death Eaters and Voldemort?" Alice asked incredulously.  
  
"Of course not! Don't be daft. We have to fight them, if only to stop something like what happened last night from ever happening again." Both women paused, shuddering at the memory of the atrocities they had witnessed. "If I thought that, I wouldn't be out there, fighting alongside you."  
  
"You fight, yet you think it's useless."  
  
"Again, you're putting words in my mouth," Lily said with some frustration. "All I'm saying is that what you - and James and Frank - and half a dozen others here seem to forget is that it's the people behind the scenes that are just as important, if not more. Without them, we wouldn't find out about half the raids we do."  
  
Stubbornness and anger - mostly at herself for getting pregnant in the first place - had kept Alice from listening to Lily but she had to admit that the younger woman had a point. "I guess you're right," she said, not willing to go further and admit that she was just being a prat.  
  
"I am right. Otherwise, why do you think Dumbledore would have people like Arabella Figg, a squib, in the Order? We're not just an army of front-line soldiers."  
  
"I said you're right. It's just hard. I feel like I'm going to be useless until I have this kid. I'm not made for deskwork. You have to know how I'm feeling; you do legwork, too."  
  
"Only because that's what we need the most and I'm all right at it. I'm not like the rest of you. I didn't hurry through Hogwarts, just waiting until I was finished so that I could join up and become an Auror. Honestly, I'd be happier if I wasn't involved in this mess at all."  
  
"Then why are you?"  
  
"Because I have to," was the simple answer. "I can't sit back and watch Voldemort destroy my world without doing something to stop him. So I volunteered. Active duty is what Dumbledore thought I'd be best for. So that's what I do. I don't mind that I'll have to take a break for the baby because I know whatever I'll be doing in the meantime will be just as important for the war effort."  
  
"I wish I could share your conviction." Alice wasn't being sarcastic. She truly wished things would be as simple for her as they seemed to be for Lily. No matter how much Lily argued otherwise, the need to get out there and fight was too deep in her blood for Alice to be able to sit back in what seemed like passiveness while others were out there, fighting the good fight.  
  
There was little else to be said. Alice wished she could reconcile herself to the inevitable upcoming changes as easily as Lily seemed to be; however, she needed a lot more time to adjust to the idea of a having a baby in her life and what it meant for her, Frank and the Order. She would be able to do it. Eventually. She just needed more time.  
  
It wasn't until she saw Lily yawning that Alice felt her own bone-deep weariness. A quick calculation told her she hadn't slept in over thirty hours. "Are you up to Apparating back to your house?"  
  
Lily shook her head, stifling another yawn. "I'm going to use one of the bedrooms to catch a quick nap." Headquarters had four spare bedrooms just for that very reason.  
  
"Me too. Wake me before you leave. We still have to report to Dumbledore."  
  
Amidst yawns and droopy eyes, Lily and Alice stumbled upstairs to bed. Yet once there, Alice continued to fret over her place in the world now that she had a baby on the way. Lily's assurances notwithstanding, she still felt she was letting everyone down. Lily tossed, worrying about the child growing inside of her. She couldn't get the image of the carnage at the safe-house out of her mind. She worried how she was supposed to protect her child from such a world.  
  
Neither had much luck falling asleep.

The End


End file.
